


Coming Home to Her (Work Song)

by Captain_Dogfish



Series: Life Set to Music [2]
Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: F/M, I gotta stop writing fics to songs, Lord, Spoilers up through S3M18, This is so 5/3 it hurts, it's just sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 03:16:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8429401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Captain_Dogfish/pseuds/Captain_Dogfish
Summary: Oh dear Lord, I love me some sad 5/3. Please behold this little ficlet thing, mixed with Hozier's "Work Song", that explores the relationship that could never be. I'm so sorry in advance for the feels.





	

_Boys workin' on empty_  
_Is that the kinda way to face the burning heat?_  
_I just think about my baby_  
_I'm so full of love I could barely eat_

Simon remembered when he first saw her.

It had been, up until her arrival, a fairly normal day. As normal as it could be in a zombie apocalypse, that is, but normal nonetheless. He’d just come back from an early-morning supply run and was busy sorting out his haul when the news started to trickle through Abel. A girl had arrived. Military. Literally had fallen out of the sky and landed at their front door, holding critical files.

It was a good trick, he’d admit. It made her memorable. He’d hung back in the crowd and watched her arrival. She looked haunted, harried, and more than a little overwhelmed. She hugged that box of files to her chest, well aware that the information it contained was her golden ticket into Abel Township.

Somewhere he heard somebody say that they were going to call her Five, that it was both her new name and her designation, and he wondered at that little tidbit of information. It hadn’t been a week since Alice, Sam’s wannabe girlfriend and the former owner of the designation “Runner Five”, had turned grey. To replace the runner that quickly…. He didn’t think the communications officer was going to like that one bit.

Simon thought he’d be the one to say hello to her, to show her around the township, to introduce her to the workings of Abel. God knows Sam wouldn’t be able to just yet, not when the girl was a walking reminder of everything he had so recently lost. _  
_

_There's nothing sweeter than my baby_  
_I'd never want once from the cherry tree_  
_'Cause my baby's sweet as can be_  
_She give me toothaches just from kissin' me_

It was months before he realized how much he loved Five. He had ample time to consider it, the night that Abel blew up in a rocket launcher attack. He and Five had run distraction duty until dark, keeping the zoms off of the remaining citizens relocating to New Canton. The two of them had been the last to arrive, worn ragged by hours of running.

He’d seen to it that she ate something. She always forgot to eat these days, too busy making sure everybody else was taken care of, but that night he refused to concede to her oh-so-noble attitude. He watched her eat every bite of her own dinner and snuck a portion of his own meal onto her plate when she wasn’t looking.

After dinner, she surprised him by informing him that hot showers awaited all the runners. Five minutes under water that was so hot it steamed and fogged up the tiny room in less than a minute. They’d even been given soap, a luxury few people were awarded these days. Most people just sluiced down their bodies to get the worst of the grime off.

She smelled like flowers afterwards, and he told her so. She smiled, corrected him slightly. “Jasmine. My favorite.”

There hadn’t been time for a proper cool-down earlier, but the shower had been hot enough to ease the worst of the cramps. Stretching in the dirt to loosen the remaining tension in their muscles was out of the question so soon after cleaning up, but he badgered Five into walking slowly around New Canton. His legs ached from exhaustion and all he really wanted to do was sleep, but Five was silent in her not-alright kind of way and he knew she needed somebody to talk to. She hadn’t said a word about Sara yet, and he knew too well that keeping that kind of grief bottled up could only end badly.

Sometime between the end of her venting and arriving at the barracks they’d been assigned to, he managed to kiss her. He told himself it was friendly, a way to tell her goodnight, but that lie was too thin for even him to believe.

After that first, brief, hesitant touch of their lips, he’d pulled away, worried he’d taken things a step to far. His concern vanished in an instant when her look of stunned surprise gave way to a warm smile, and then they were kissing again. It only lasted a few seconds because she was smiling too broadly to kiss him properly. He couldn’t help laughing at that and, by God, he wasn’t going to let that little fact go away before he teased her relentlessly about it.     

 _When, my, time comes around_  
_Lay me gently in the cold dark earth_  
_No grave can hold my body down_  
_I'll crawl home to her_

They kept it quiet, their little relationship. She was shy about her emotions, and he loved her too much to risk blowing it now. In public, they acted the same as always. Alright, maybe he brushed his hand against hers a wee bit more than necessary when they sorted supplies together after a run. And so what if he had to help her keep her balance during their yoga sessions? She was doing similar things. Whenever they practiced marksmanship, she steadied his hands with her own, and she was always willing to cover his hands with hers to show him how to properly dismantle, clean, and rebuild a weapon. Not to mention how quick she was to fidget with the straps on his backpack while he was wearing it. Trying to adjust the fit, she’d say, trying to make the load more comfortable for him to carry, and he’d roll his eyes and smile.

It was easy, at this time, to blow off the suggestions of their enemy. Simon didn’t even know why Van Ark was talking to him, trying to tempt him, but he couldn’t care less. Five was his. He was hers.  Even if he couldn’t shout his victory from the rooftops, what more could he need?   _  
_

_That's when my baby found me_  
_I was three days on a drunken sin_  
_I woke with her walls around me_  
_Nothin' in her room but an empty crib_

He should have known better than to dismiss Van Ark.

It wasn’t three days after Simon had told Van Ark something very rude about what Van Ark could do with his offer of “abilities beyond comprehension” when Five was kidnapped. Simon had never felt the desire to kill so desperately as he did in the moment he watched Five’s headcam feed bounce and jostle with ever step she ran behind Van Ark's Jeep. His hands trembled so badly he could have sworn they were vibrating in time to the rattle of the chain holding Five captive. Except for Five’s harsh and heavy breathing, loud through the speakers, he couldn’t hear a thing. The world had narrowed into this nightmare, and he prayed desperately to a God he didn’t believe in (but would give anything to) that Five would make it out of this alive and in one piece.

He nearly cried when Paula went back to Van Ark, but not because he cared about her and Maxine. No, he was to selfish for that. He nearly cried because that’s when he knew Five would be able to come home.

He’d run out to meet her. She was battered and bruised and bleeding. He swept her off her feet the moment he reached her and carried her all the way home to Abel, throat tight with emotion. He stayed with her through the night, hugged her shaking body close to his. She wept at everything that had happened, screamed awake from nightmares, and Simon did his best to comfort her. Inside, though, his mind raced with fear and panic. Five was vulnerable. She had nearly died because of Van Ark.

Simon swore that, from that moment onward, he would protect Five no matter the cost. Nothing like this would ever happen again, not if he had anything to say about it.

Two days after the ordeal, Van Ark contacted him again. This time, it wasn’t to tempt Simon with promises of glory; it was to threaten Five's life.

 _And I was burnin' up a fever_  
_I didn't care much how long I lived_  
_But I swear I thought I dreamed her_  
_She never asked me once about the wrong I did_

Simon never could quite piece together how it happened.

So much of what Van Ark asked him to do seemed harmless. A sample of this. A scrap of information about that. Eventually the injections came, a just reward for so loyal a servant, Van Ark had said. They hurt, they burned, and while he was caught in their delirium he swore Five was screaming his name, begging him to come back to her.

He didn’t know what had been done to him. He covered up the injection marks, his skin bruised dark blue and nearly black where the needles had pierced his skin. He kept up the persona people expected from him. At night, on the rare occasions Five caught him having nightmares, he’d shy away from her touch. So much depended on him doing exactly what Van Ark told him to do. He couldn’t shake the images from his mind, the pictures of Five on missions, in Abel, laughing with him. Pictures that shouldn’t exist. Pictures that proved how quickly Five would die if Simon did not do everything he was told.

He knew how badly it hurt her when he started to pull away from her, to distance himself. He felt that pain, too. He was dying inside, all to protect her from what he had done.

When it all went to hell, he felt he deserved every kick and blow Jamie gave him. And the zombies that came afterwards were nothing compared to the sight of his Five crying as she was forced to leave him behind. _  
_

_When, my, time comes around_  
_Lay me gently in the cold dark earth_  
_No grave can hold my body down_  
_I'll crawl home to her_

He hadn’t died physically, but he could feel the barren, ashen expanse where his soul used to be and he wondered if perhaps this immortality of his hadn’t simply erased his soul and left his husk to keep moving.

From a distance, he watched his love. She was grieving; he could see it in her every footstep. Her eyes were empty, dead. She never smiled. She clutched dog tags around her neck, and he knew they were Sara’s. He’d thrown his away after he succumbed to Van Ark, and he’d never gotten them replaced. He had never deserved them anyway. They were the mark of a loyal, faithful soldier, and he was anything but that.

He wondered if Five kept anything of his to remember him by.

 _When, my, time comes around_  
_Lay me gently in the cold dark earth_  
_No grave can hold my body down_  
_I'll crawl home to her_

He followed her when she ran Sara’s ashes to the ocean. He watched her drop to her knees at the end of the dock and bow her head, body wracked with sobs, to grieve her mentor. The others had pulled back, gone to wait for her at a respectful distance while her grief worked itself out in howls or agony.

He wished they had left entirely. He wanted nothing more than to go and hug her, to hold her close against his side. His wounds were a little more healed now. He was less likely to frighten her with his appearance, especially with this new mask in place. But no, he was forced to hang back and watch the love of his life break into pieces while he stood helplessly off to the side.

Perhaps Van Ark had made good on his threats from somewhere beyond the grave. Simon never had given in to that final order. It was Sara, the double agent, who had brought Five to Van Ark in the end. Not him. _  
_

_My baby never fret none_  
_About what my hands and my body done_  
_If the Lord don't forgive me_  
_I'd still have my baby and my babe would have me_

It was nothing short of a miracle, finally getting her alone.

The Deadlocks were an unexpected and dangerous twist, but he knew how to handle them. He’d swooped in just in time to save her life and guide her to safety. Sure, he might have played up the drama of his “resurrection” a little bit, but how could he resist? That was a façade, a defensive wall in case she rejected him. He was an actor, and he put this face forward in the hope that she wouldn’t notice it was fake.

She hadn’t rejected him, though, despite his best efforts to make her do so. He feared her rejection, her refusal to take him back. He desperately needed her forgiveness, yet he did everything he could to push her away. She was just as scared of him, of this new incarnation of him, as he was of her, but she didn’t abandon him.

She refused to leave him despite everything he did and said. Instead, she took his remaining hand and smiled.

 _When I was kissing on my baby_  
_And she put her love down soft and sweet_  
_In the low lamp light I was free_  
_Heaven and hell were words to me_

She kissed him and he cried.

After he had given her the papers filled with information Abel Township desperately needed, he’d expected her to run away. He’d pulled a gun on her, after all. At this point he just needed her gone. He thought he’d be able to handle being near her, but he couldn’t. It hurt too much. He had let her down. His crimes were unforgivable, and he needed to go back to cowering in the shadows where he belonged. So he yelled at her, screamed at her to go.

She hadn’t left, though. Instead, she’d set the papers off to one side and, standing on tiptoe in order to equal his height (had he ever told her how cute she looked at five-foot-not-enough-inches? He didn’t think so, but he suddenly wished he had), she planted a gentle kiss on his forehead. He bowed his head when she pulled away, collapsing in on himself. Her arms wrapped around his body, a gentle hug that told him how sensitive she was to his wounds and pain. He leaned into the embrace, surrendered to it. Tears streaked hot down his face, stinging in the cuts marring his face, and he let himself be held.

 _When, my, time comes around_  
_Lay me gently in the cold dark earth_  
_No grave can hold my body down_  
_I'll crawl home to her_

He had to let her go, after that. Had to let her return to Abel. She swore she’d keep his secret, but she made him swear to meet her again. She wasn’t content with just knowing he was alive; she wanted to help him as best she could.

He wondered what twist of fate, what stroke of good fortune, had brought somebody like Five into his hellish life when he so clearly did not deserve her. _  
_

_When, my, time comes around_  
_Lay me gently in the cold dark earth_  
_No grave can hold my body down_  
_I'll crawl home to her_

Every day he wished—oh, God, he _wished_ —he had told her how much he loved her. But while he might have had the opportunity to show her, he never did speak the words.

In a lifetime of doing the wrong things for the right reasons, that was what he regretted most of all.


End file.
